-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Blacklisted News, Secret History . . . From Chicago, '68, to 1984 ©1983 Youth International Party Information Service Bleecker Publishing POB 392 Canal St. Station New York, NY 10012 ISBN 0-912873-00-0 ----- Old news, but the cryptocracys' tactics don't change much. Om K ----- If they really wanted to get you, all the denials by DEA officials that domestically they were engaged in the equivalent of CIA assassinations of foreign leaders or revolutionaries would do you little good . . . DEA Assassins Hit Viet Vet Rad Scott Camil was shot in the back by a federal Drug Enforcement Administration assassin named Dennis Fitzgerald—"accidentally," according to agents Fitzgerald and William Porter, whose car he was struggling to get out of at the time, Porter and Fitzgerald, posing as coke dealers starting a straight business front, had first approached Camil to buy some business cards from his family office supply company. Because Camil lived, it became necessary to charge him with "sale of cocaine"—2.5 ounces allegedly left with Camil by a mysteriously unidentified hitch-hiker whom agents claim to have let leave the car unscathed before the shooting. Other agents "found" $2300 after hanging around Camil's house for 5 hours. It was not the first time he was targeted by the government. Camil served 20 months with the marines in Vietnam and came home thoroughly disillusioned with U.S. policy. One of the original coordinators of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he was a target in Florida when 8 vets were indicted in July of '72 for plotting to assault the 1972 Republican convention with slingshots and bows and arrows. These charges were finally thrown out of court. After checking out this interview Scott allowed that, while there's nothing he'd rather leave unsaid, we should make it clear that our interviewer took the initiative in drawing out details of the historical development of the VVAW. He's very guarded in meeting and talking to people now. D.E.A. informer Barbara Bastile Ives, paid by the government to fuck Camil, said "Yeah, we set him up. That's our job." ON HIS BUST Q. What do you think of the parallel of your case and Tim Leary's: DEA use of a government prostitute? A. It makes it really hard-it really does. I mean, you meet someone, they seem really nice. You become close to them, and they start spending weekends with you. Then they introduce you to a "close friend," the dude shoots you, and they turn out to be an agent. She made a statement to the press it was a set-up; that this was her job. She was assigned to come up here from Orlando and go out with me. Basically what it comes down to is that she deceived me, and she was being paid by the government to sleep with me. That's the first time they ever pulled that one on me. Q. Is it true that after the Gainsville Eight trial the federal prosecutor came up to you and said, "We're going to get you yet!"? A. No. He said it in front of a taxicab driver who took him to the airport. The cabbie came back to us and told us he said "We're still going to get Camil and two others." Q. What happened to you personally after the trial? A. I started working on a book on the Gainesville 8 trial and the other trials I had during that time. I was still speaking, but I limited my speaking to the Gainesville 8 case, the abuse of force by the government, universal amnesty. (I prefer to call it repatriation), and the JFK assassination, on which I've read just about everything written. I keep in active contact with the Assassination Information Bureau in Massachussetts. There's no doubt in my mind that the government killed the President. Q. Ever seen the pix of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas? A.. I believe they were involved because I believe Connally was involved, I believe Nixon was involved, I believe Gerald Ford was involved, and that those people were all connected together-and I couldn't swear under oath those pictures were them, but I do believe those pictures are them. Now concerning current events, here you have Colby, who was head of the Phoenix Operation in Nam. Now he's head of the CIA, and what do you get? A whole bunch of supposed refugees, of whom I'm sure a good percentage are Project Phoenix assassins. And they owe their allegiance not to the American government or the American people, but to the CIA. I could see the next Watergaters not being Cubans, but Vietnamese. Now they've got someone to do their dirty work who's had plenty of practice. Q. What made the government so upset that they did this number on you? A. I don't know if it was something I was doing then, or if it was something I had done before and maybe had the potential to do again. I feel the main objective was to stop the book, and that feeling is based on the fact that while agents Dennis Fitzgerald and William Porter were shooting me in the street, other agents were raiding my house with a search warrant that called for cocaine, hashish and extract of cannabis sativa L, plus "photographs and documents pertaining thereto." Now they found none of the things the warrant called for; no cocaine, no hashish, no extract of cannabis sativa—but they found lots of documents: my book. My lawyer and my landlord were in the house while they were taking everything out of the house. The DEA left an inventory of what they took, which I have a copy of, clearly shows that what they took was not on the warrant, was not drug related and not illegal. They took my photographs of undercover agents, they took my dossiers on under- cover narcs, they went through my manuscript page by page and took out what they wanted. Q. There was a lot about agents in the book? A. Sure. How could you write anything of that type without telling about the agents; who they really were, what their method of operation was, who they worked for? They took all the dossiers on the agents that they knew about. They also took the list of people who donated money to the Gainesville Eight. They took the supporters' list: people who worked with us. They took our list of press contacts: which people in particular were our contacts at all the newspapers and radio and TV stations. They took our list of prospective witnesses for the Gainesville Eight trial. We rested without even putting on a case, since they hadn't proved anything, so we never had to put our witnesses on and the government didn't know who they were. I also lost my personal notes on the trial, and files of all my other trials. Now if I'd died in the street, all it says on the inventory is things like "bottom drawer of file cabinet," "U.S. Attorney-cases," file of this, file of that-but people didn't know what the hell was in that stuff. I'm the only one that knew. And now I'm not dead and I can talk about it. But proof that they're not being legitimate is that they came into the house without a search warrant, they had no arrest warrant, they shot me with a gun that didn't belong to them, and so far the Gainesville Police Department, which is investigating the shooting, has not been able to ascertain who the gun belongs to. Now how can they say the agents pick up a hitch -hiker, he sells me the drugs in front of them, they let him walk away and shoot me for trying to escape? Why did they come to Gainesville when they were not Gainesville DEA agents? All the locals-city, county, Gainesville DEA—say they were not informed. If they were trying to cover up for these people, they'd say "Yeah, we knew what was coming down." But they say "We don't even know what the hell is going on." These agents came in from Orlando without a search warrant, without an arrest warrant. They shot me. They got an arrest warrant and a seach[sic] warrant after I was shot and after they went through my house. The DEA people threw my friends out of the house. My landlord, who lives across the street, and my lawyer came and said "Let's see your warrant." They refused. My landlord called the police. When the police came, the landlord told them that the agents were trespassing on his property, and to make them get out. The GPD said they had no authority over the federal government, even though there was no warrant. Three hours later a warrant came. I have government documentation to all of this. They didn't do anything legitimate at all. Q. You seem to imply there's some paramilitary, para-police organization at work here. A. Certainly! Not only that, the information we have on the agents involved, which I can't disclose until the trial, will clearly show that the guy who shot me, his record, which has been buried pretty deep and covered over pretty well, will clearly show, if what we've been able to dig out so far Q. In other words, it was the same guys you had the information on who shot you? A. No, but we have that information now. Q. Any relation to that pair in Miami; "Salt" and "Pepper"? A. "Pepper" [Harry Crenshaw] was killed on my birthday, May 19—the same as Ho Chi Minh, I might add. The one that's still alive, "Salt" [Jerry Rudolph] just gave a talk to the Miami police cadets on "Drug usage and hippies." But Fitzgerald, the guy who shot me, was a friend of Crenshaw's. I received a newspaper clipping in the mail, sent anonymously, that said "'Undercover Agent Killed in Miami Street." Someone had written across it "Happy birthday." When they came into my house and took my files, that was one of the things they took. But I'm not ashamed that people want me to know a pig is dead. Q. Hope they don't shoot you again! What about going to Congress-the Senate subcommittee on Government Operations that's investigating the DEA? A. We're working on that, but for us to disclose everything we know to the government before the trial would be harmful to the outcome. So, until the trial comes off, I'm not going to mail that stuff to Washington. They've requested it. There are people in touch with congressmen. Concerning getting shot again, in the Marine Corps I learned a saying, "Payback is a mother-fucker." I believe that very much, and also "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The next time one of those fuckers pulls a gun, I'll make him eat it. I'm well armed. I have a lot of experience blowing people away. They're the ones who made the rules, and I'm willing to play the game. If they come looking for me, I can blow many more of them away before they get me. I'm not going to be intimidated. I don't fear them. I was wounded twice in Viet Nam-this is the third time I've been wounded-and while it's not exactly something you get used to, on the other hand they're pigs, and I'm not going to worry about them at all. Q. Saigon soldiers... A. They're stupid. just the fact of which side they're on shows where their fucking intelligence is. When those dudes jumped me in the car and put the gun on me, I could have taken the gun away from him and shot him, but here's Scott Camil—shoots two dudes in a car with a gun that doesn't belong to the two dudes, and Scott Camil is in trouble. I didn't even know those two, except that they were friends of the woman I was going out with. They didn't tell me who they were. They had a gun to my head, and told me that if I moved, they'd blow my head off. I felt that if I just went peaceably with them wherever they wanted me to go, they could take me to a woods and do me in and I wouldn't have a chance, but in the middle of the city, I figured I could just open a door and jump out. The car was moving but I didn't give a shit, because I didn't think they would try to off me in traffic, and expose themselves to that kind of risk. So, even though they had a gun to me, I tried getting out of the car. And they did shoot me. Then they stopped the car and got out, and I thought they were coming to finish me off. I couldn't figure out why they didn't just hit the gas and haul ass. Then they showed me their badges. Q. Sounds backwards.... A. The bullet entered my eleventh rib in the rear, two inches to the left of my spine. It went through my diaphragm, into my kidney, and lodged in my abdomen about 3 inches to the left of my gall bladder. I had two pints of blood pumped out of my stomach, two out of my lungs, and a chest tube in. The government picked up the tab for everything. Right now I'm somewhat underweight, my blood count is back to normal, and I'm physically able to do about what I want to. My lung is a little fucked up-not as much power for sneezing and coughing. Q. What did the community think? A. The initial reaction of the Gainesville police was resentment: these people come in from out of town, shoot somebody, and then drop all the problems into the lap of the GPD. The DEA goes back to Orlando, leaving them to handle all the repercussions. Like—they were under the impression that a bunch of crazies were going to blow the town apart or something. That just shows that they still don't know who we are or where we're coming from. But when I had a relapse-my lung filled with fluid again-and was sent back to the VA hospital to have it pumped out, everybody was really friendly to me. Poe, one of the informers against the Gainesville Eight, works at that hospital. Nobody talks to him. Who the hell's going to be friends with someone who's deceitful, who's known as a spy? He's got a very miserable lite. There's been a lot of support from the community. Of course, one of the tactics the government used in this one was cocaine. Marijuana doesn't turn the community off. Cocaine does. Not only does it turn the community off, but a lot of the movement supporters who've been burned by Abbie say "Oh, no; we're not fucking going to buy this kind of shit." Last time, we raised $150,000 cash in eight days. This time, we had to borrow $5000 for the bail, and the due date to repay it is very soon. We've only been able to raise $2000. Unless we raise the additional $3000 very soon, I go back to jail. The whole thing is that people don't want to get burned, and cocaine turns them off. Q. What's this about the Revolutionary Union saying they have proof that you did it? A. That's the VVAW. People have called VVAW and asked why they weren't helping, and they said "Because we believe he's guilty." WSO/RU, as I call them, is very vindictive because they lost all the intelligent people in the organization when they made their coup. Like-the organization has no real credibility any more. It does nothing of national prominence. It has nothing in common with what it started out to be. Q. I'm interested in knowing how that was done. A. Basically, VVAW was an organization in a few states-New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey-until the Winter Soldier Investigation. They'd done a few marches and demonstrations, nothing more. Originally we testified in the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit, January 30th—February 3rd, 1971. For a lot of us, that was our first contact with the Movement. Jane Fonda had spoken at the University of Florida, saying that veterans were getting it together to testify and show documentation that would prove that what happened in My Lai was not an isolated incident or an abberation, but part of official U.S. policy. I agreed 100% with her statement and I had a lot of pictures taken in Vietnam, so I decided to go up and testify, and to contact VVAW as it existed then. There were a lot of other people who, like me, had had no Movement contact before. We sat down and Mike Oliver and Al Hubbard said to us: "Listen, you guys, you think you've been fucked over, now you want to do something about it? Let's make this into a national organization, and let's make the purpose of this organization to educate people to the truth." We wrote a constitution and set up objectives, with which I still agree completely. We were a veteran's organization run by veterans for veterans, concerned with things veterans had credibility to speak about, like the Vietnam war and amnesty. Q. How was the VVAW originally structured? A. We all went home and started contacting other people. I returned to Florida and started getting hold of vets, telling them what had happened in Detroit. We put on our own Winter Soldier Investigation here in Florida. It organized like that in other states. Then we had chapters Q. How were chapters set up? A. People would join. I would set up a speaking gig at, say, a school in Miami. After speaking, I'd ask anyone interested in joining to come up. Five or six vets would come up. I'd explain what the organization was about and what the objectives were, and that if they'd like to set up a chapter, I'd help them. They'd say yes, they wanted to start a chapter, and I'd give them a list of 500 vets in Miami. Their job was to contact those people, educate them to what they were trying to do, and enlist their help if interested. That's how chapters were started in Florida. Q. Then how well the organization did depended on how well the coordinator did his job. A. Exactly. Some regions were never organized; places like Nebraska and the Dakotas. We divided the country into 26 parts, with one coordinator per part, whose job it was to organize the veterans in that area. If you had an urban center, you had a much better chance than if you had 3 members 300 miles apart. Once an area was organized, the veterans in that area would democratically elect who they wanted to represent them at the national steering committee meetings, and that person would be the area coordinator. But the most important thing about the organization as it was started is that the membership had the final say. We'd have a national steering committee meeting and decide what we thought was a good idea for a demonstration, like going to Washington and throwing the medals away. I'd come back to Florida, and we'd hold a regional meeting. I'd explain to the chapter representatives what the plans were, and they would decide to change it, amend it, ratify it, or deny it. These ideas went back to the steering committee, were counted up and the final version sent back to the chapters to be ratified. One of the key things was that no one ever had to participate in anything they couldn't conscientiously agree to. There was no peer pressure saying "Everyone else agreed to it-you should too." If the membership didn't agree to it, we didn't do it. There came a time when a Washington demonstration was planned for Christmas. It was decided that Christmas trees had to be burned. This was to take place in 5 different parts of the country, and in 3 of those parts, the membership went against it. The national office came down saying "We ordered you to do it, and you have to do it." Q. How could they be ordered to do that? A. Well, as the organization grew to approximately 30,000 members, things started changing. There were a number of people who felt that it was not really good to be just a veteran's organization, that it was elitist and that there was no room in the Movement for that sort of bullshit. I was one who felt that we should remain VVAW. I was against the concept of the Winter Soldier Organization. Actually, when the vote came down the WSO part didn't pass. It was decided that the regions would decide whether they wanted to be VVAW or WSO or both. Then the Gainesville bust came down. A lot of us had all our energy pulled into the Gainesville Eight trial, and the National Office decided that we were now VVAW/WSO. Non-vets were now able to hold national office. What those of us who wrote the constitution felt was that, as vets, we had a certain special credibility about the war. The liberals couldn't discredit us by saying we weren't willing to serve our country, because we were the ones who carried out the policies. We were there, we knew what we did, and when we came home and found the government saying something else was going on, we began to wonder how come the government was lying about it. But once the organization opened up to non-veterans... Q. When did it happen? A. It started in late '71. But the National Office, which was supposed to be an administrative office that rated things based on the decisions of the membership-well, the N.O. just wouldn't let it drop. They would just keep pushing it and pushing it. They put pressure on each place that voted against it one at a time, until it was a majority, and then declared it policy. They called Texas and Louisiana saying that Florida supported it. Those people would vote for it; I would get to those people and they would say, "Well didn't you vote for it?" I'd say no, and they'd say "We voted for it because the N.O. said Florida was behind it." I hear there was a whole lot of trouble like that, where the people of the N.O. who were supposed to be coordinating around the country were being dishonest with the regions and causing people to vote the way they wouldn't normally vote. People got control of the N.O. who made it the top of VVAW, rather than it being the servant of the membership. It was no longer run by the grass roots. It was run by people at the National Office, who eventually became nothing but a bunch of pseudo-Marxist Maoist intellectuals. I talked to several ex-coordinators who are no longer with the organization and we've all agreed that the organization is nothing more than an R.U. study group. Q. You're telescoping a lot of historical development there ... A. Basically, the N.O. sent people down to the regions to disrupt them. Regions which were opposed suddenly started having intraregional hassles spurred by the national office. It happened here, and I was able to get one of the people involved to confess that it was a plot. I got it on tape and brought it to one of the meetings to tell people what was going on. The regional group listened to the tape admitting planned disruption, and decided that since the person who confessed didn't know that it was being taped until afterwards, that we were using the same tactics as the pigs, so they decided not to use it. The chapters that wanted to listen to it, I let hear it anyway. The chapters that didn't want to listen to it were run by the people who were friends of Barry Romo. I think Barry Romo was one of the key people who led to the downfall of VVAW. Q. Didn't Barry Romo come down and take over the whole action for the Miami Conventions? A. Romo was from the National Office in New York at the time. People were elected to the N.O. from all over the country. He was elected from California. But he was elected by the coordinators, who would make all the nominations for national coordinators. What it boiled down to, though, in effect was that if you wanted to be a national officer you had to give up your job, family and everything else and move to New York for 6 months or a year. So we didn't simply nominate people we felt were best qualified to run the N.C. First we had to find out who was willing to go to the N.O. Q. Sounds very familiar... A. Well, who would want to quit school, split their job, and say goodbye to their girlfriend for a year? Only a fool. So what would happen is we'd have 3 chairs to be filled, and we'd have 4 people who volunteered to take them. Then we'd vote on 3 of the 4 we wanted. So the National Office was not made up of people the coordinators felt were best qualified; it was made up of the people we thought were best qualified out of the people who were willing to do it in the first place. That's how people like Barry Romo got into the N.O. It was never that we felt that they were the best qualified. Now all the coordination for the country goes through the National Office. Now the N.O. could made a phone call to Florida, and say "What do you want to do about X?" We'd petition the membership, and they'd say no. But the N.O. could then call up Texas and say "Florida's for it." This happened often. Q. Didn't you have any lateral communications? A. Sure we did. But with 26 regions and no money, it's hard to call 26 people to find out how they feel about it. That's why you have a National Office. Everybody was supposed to call in with their input, and the N.O. was supposed to send out a newsletter with the information. But they were cheating. When we found out that those tactics were being used by the N.O., we weren't going to stand for it. We were ready to dump all those people there. Then the Gainesville bust came down, and we got locked into something else and the National Office sent people down into the regions. Like here I was tied up in legal hassles, and they sent people down here from New York who completely destroyed Florida as a region. No chapters are left in Florida. They may claim there are, but they're full of shit. There's nothing here; no WSO, no VVAW. The N.O. did it just like the FBI does. They sent provocateurs to disrupt us with lies and bullshit. Q. Doesn't it seem that rather than "just like the FBI," in view of the way the bust removed people from the scene who might've prevented this takeover, that it was done with deliberate federal assistance? A. I have no documentation. I would say it's a definite possibility. With any dirty trick, you've got to suspect the government first. Those of us who had the strength to prevent the kind of bullshit that was coming down, like John Niffen and myself, were removed from the picture, tied up in our trials. Q. What do you think of the idea of government management of the Movement; taking some people out and letting others operate freely? A. That's their politics, their tactics. If you're up against the government, they feel they have to get rid of you. They can do this by discrediting the organization; by putting infiltrators and provocateurs into it to give you a bad name and destroying your credibility, and by taking out your key people (either by throwing them into jail, killing them or causing them so many problems they just drop out). A lot of people dropped out just because of harassment by the FBI. All those tactics were used against us. Q. Was any attempt ever made to rescue the refugees after it became clear what RU was trying to do? A. From the time I was arrested as one of the Gainesville Eight, all my energies were directed toward the trial. Not only that. After they dumped the people that they wanted to get rid of, so that they could run things from the National Office instead of from the bottom up like we were trying to keep it, they started putting out bad information on myself and almost every other coordinator who doesn't back them and will speak up as to why. They've done propaganda campaigns against us. I don't think that the organization now known as VVAW/WS0 has the right to use the credibility of those of us who busted our asses to gain it, for bullshit. What I'm saying is that I had already given up on VVAW because of the way people from New York were sent down to Miami to disrupt the organization. The key people who did it were Barry Romo's girlfriend and one of her girlfriends. They came down to Florida and seduced people here to try and turn the tide which they did a very good job of. Meanwhile, not more than 300 miles away, Right-wing Cubans (in violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits the waging of private wars from U.S. soil) were training secret armies-to be ready, like the Somocistas today, to one day re- invade la Patria. They became a kind of American political institution. Almost. Inside the CIA's Miami Training Camps by Jorge Varona All four of the former agents I talked to had joined the CIA either before or during the Bay of Pigs training period. Two were in the invasion, and two were in the Cuban underground. One of them said: "I don't know when they will need me again." When Cuban exiles began arriving in the United States in 1959 many thought the best way to go back to their country was a war in which a powerful ally was needed. The ally was there in the form of a sympathetic United States government which sponsored the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion-an invasion which had as an end result the consolidation of the government of Prime Minister Fidel Castro. Cubans in general have had a dichotomous attitude toward the United States: traditionally Cubans have distrusted the "Colossus of the North" while expressing great admiration for American political stability and know-how. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was easily blamed by many on the inexperience and "lack of guts" of the late President John F. Kennedy: the disgruntled exiles, however, kept alive their hopes of getting control of their homeland by joining tip with an arm of the government which was sympathetic and powerful: the Central Intelligence Agency. Not all the Cubans who fought against Castro were CIA followers, but those days in the camps in Guatemala had seen strong friendships grow between the trainees and the CIA instructors. When the invaders came back, many gravitated to the U.S. Army and others stayed close to the intelligence community in the Miami area. CIA recruitment of operatives and agents began even before Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown. Watergate burglar Frank Fionini-Sturgis has admitted he was recruited to work by the CIA while he was ferrying weapons to Cuban rebels under the direction of former Cuban President Carlos Prio Socarras. The CIA maintained a large network of operatives in the island nation up to the 1961 U.S.-sponsored invasion, when most of them were arrested and neutralized by the Cuban secret police (known as G-2). Those agents who were not caught had to go into hiding and were, for the most part, neutralized. Only a small, hardy group survived and may even be working today. But it is the Miami-based CIA groups, the ones functioning in Miami that grew and were used by American intelligence to form an intelligence network which extended through Latin America and Europe through the 1960s and '70s. Following the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA began a recruitment drive in Miami among Cuban exiles and trained many of them in the commando raid tactics which were used in the 18-month period between the invasion and the October 1962 Missile crisis. Following the Crisis, CIA Cuba activities became more covert, since the "understanding" reached by American President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khruschev precluded any direct invasion of Cuba. To gather the information in this article, four former CIA agents were interviewed; two of these were Principal Agents who acted under direct orders from the CIA. CIA headquarters were located at the JM WAVE, a number of office buildings and warehouses located at the University of Miami's south campus. JM WAVE operated under the guise of Zenith Technological Services, an electronics firm which was supposed to have been engaged in doing weapons research for the Defense Department. AN the agents interviewed had first come in contact with the CIA either before or during the Bay of Pigs training period. Two participated in the invasion and two were members of the Cuban underground. They will be known only by first names, since they do not want to compromise their lives. One of them said: "I don't know when they will need me again." William R. Amlong described the CIA Miami operation in the March 9, 1975 Miami Herald as "the largest anywhere in the world outside its headquarters in Langley, Virginia." During the height of the Cuban operation over 400 officers of the CIA connected with propaganda, paramilitary and infiltration operation worked out of there. In this headquarters the activities of more than 1,500 Cuban exile operatives were coordinated. These operatives, according to Rolando, one of the agents, operated freely in Miami, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Spain, France, West Germany and Italy. Even though The Company has denied it, Sturgis has confirmed he was involved in assassination plots against Castro and other Latin leaders. many of these operations were probably hatched at the JM WAVE. With the conclusion of the Missile Crisis and the return of the Bay of Pigs invaders to American soil, the CIA operation began to enter the infiltration and harassment of Cuba phase in which small teams went to Cuba to deliver radios, explosives and weapons to underground elements. This was the apogee of the Cuban operation, which lasted with official sanction until early 1965, when Lyndon Johnson brought his own political clout to the White House. The recruitment of exiles was described by the agents as follows: Immigration and Naturalization Service authorities screening exiles would tip off the CIA as to whom they thought could be an effective agent. Local exiles already working for the CIA would in turn go to visit them and invite the new arrivals to visit one of the many "safe" houses "La Compania" had in Miami. One of these was the old Revolutionary Council house just north of downtown Miami. The CIA tried to recruit farmers and fishermen who knew the coast and who could help the infiltration teams get into Cuba without being seen. Training began with classes in Miami, where the recruits began learning about tactics and weapons. These classes were usually held at the house of one of the Principal Agents. Most of the time the CIA tried to have these Cuban PAs very visible in front of Cuban recruits in order to gain their confidence. Those recruits who would actually become agents and not just operatives would be sent up for further training at Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Florida (where, perhaps not coincidentally, the Watergate burglars would be imprisoned in 1973-74). Some of the training in guerrilla warfare took place in the Okeefenokee Swamp in the Florida Panhandle and southern Georgia. The recruits stayed for about one month at this base. From here the recruits went to several bases near the CIA headquarters in Virginia, where they received further training in tactics, commando raids and weapons. Training in these bases also lasted for a month. According to Roland: "From here we were taken in closed planes to another base. We did not know where they took us; the base had no markings. I don't know where this base is. There we took training in explosives and demolition." This type of training, he said, was held regularly until at least 1968. At least two of the agents confirmed about 300 men received training in demolitions. The training varied because while some were taught demolition on dry land, others learned all about underwater charges. This phase of operations in large scale ceased right after Lyndon Johnson took over in 1965. The 1965-68 period saw an increase in the infiltrations for the purpose of gathering intelligence and the rescuing of agents inside Cuba. It is also believed that in this period some more of the assassination plots against Castro were hatched in Miami. While official U.S. policy at the time was one of "hands off" Cuba, local authorities often looked the other way when exiles, especially CIA agents or operatives, were caught breaking the neutrality laws. "I remember we caught one of these guys who had a lot of explosives and weapons in his house," said a former Dade County policeman who is now self- employed. "The feds came in and took everything we had, saying that they were going to draw up federal charges against the man. They took everything, the weapons, the explosives, everything. We told them that we needed something so that we could bring our own charges against the man (who had been active in anti-Castro activities in Miami) and the federal agents left the State Attorney a case of hand grenades. Well, as it turned out, there was no regulation at the time in Dade or Miami covering possession of hand grenades. We had to let him go." Since Cuba could not be the object of a massive CIA operation, the CIA began using the recruited exiles to check on pro-Castro activity in Europe and Latin America. Already well known is the manhunt of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Bolivia, in which at least 2 of the agents interviewed participated in minor roles. Exiles also participated in the covert propaganda work in Chile which helped to defeat Salvador Allende Gossens in 1964. The CIA operation in Miami was divided into the ubiquitous cells. Normally, one cell did not really know what the other was doing, in case one of the groups were caught in Cuba. There was also another reason for this: usually, members of one cell may have been political enemies of the members of another cell. There were cells made up of the people who had been connected with former President Prio, other cells consisted of former followers of Batista, and still others were comprised of former members of the Castro revolutionary army. Men who normally would not be able to work together because of irreconciliable political conflicts worked this way together. This way, with Machiavellian precision, the CIA did for the exiles what they could never do: band together to fight Castro. The same political division was used by the CIA to keep any of the groups from reaching a position of relative strength. A good example of this was the campaign of vituperation against Manolo Ray, a liberal, left-of-center former Castro minister who headed a powerful and popular exile group. Ray was accused of being a Fidelista, sin Fidel (one who liked Fidel Castro's revolution, but not the man), and his group lost much of the influence it had after the campaign. The CIA usually kept informants as members of most groups and managed to control even the most fanatical nationalists. As the anti-Castro activity began to be controlled more closely with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, the CIA kept on its payroll a "secret police" in Miami, which numbered anywhere from 200 to 300 exiles. Men like Watergate burglar Eugenio Rolando "Musculito" Martinez belonged to this group. The CIA and some of the agents claim this group was officially disbanded by 1972, though most of the men remained on a retainer. Martinez was still collecting a $100-a-month retainer from the CIA when he was caught inside the Democratic National Headquarters. Members of this group trained near the JM WAVE facility. Others took training courses at the "School of the Americas" in Fort Gulick, Panama Canal Zone. In Miami the cloak-and-dagger activities of the CIA became mixed up with the drug traffic since some of the operatives were dealing in heroin and marijuana. These dealers had what amounted to official protection because of the work they did. Part of the official protection the CIA had in Miami extended to the Miami Police Department and also to the Dade County Sheriff's office. Former Miami Police Chief Bernard Garmire provided some of the official protection the CIA operatives needed. This extended to having CIA operatives keep a close eye on independent anti-Castro groups; they usually busted their members when it seemed they were going to make some freelance raids on Cuba. During the 1972 Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Miami Beach, CIA operatives infiltrated most anti-Castro groups and often set them off against each other or against the left-wing groups protesting the conventions. The CIA also sponsored "front" companies which served as support for the Company. An example of this is the Hialeah egg factory in which many of these operatives worked, among them Jose Antonio Prat, who mysteriously "killed himself" in Miami in early February, 1976. One of the front men of the factory is a "retired" CIA agent known as Richard "Ell Americano" who spent 12 years in Castro's dungeons for espionage. Up to 60 of these "companies" grew around Miami; often they would have names similar to real companies and even say they have similar products. Calls to them would invariably bring excuses about "not having the material available" if an unsuspecting customer were calling. The receptionists would lie about the whereabouts of the "salesmen", and even to credit companies calling in to confirm employment and salary. Sometimes only a telephone call to Tallahassee would confirm a Miami "corporation" would not be registered and operating outside Florida laws. These "corporations" would, however, be seldom prosecuted. The same is true of a number of used car lots which opened up in Miami and were run by some of these exile operatives in the mid-1960s. U.S. Representative William Lehman, a used car dealer in North Miami, told the Rockefeller Commission he thought there was some unfair competition from the CIA, since many of these dealerships used to undersell him at the time. Exiles who would normally have to work for a living at other jobs worked this way and were paid directly, even though they seldom paid for cars and spent most of the time plotting anti-Castro activities in the air-conditioned offices. Although the CIA activities in Miami have slowed down since 1972 and the agents interviewed claim recruitment has stopped altogether, a legacy has remained in Miami. The trainees did not quite stop working after the CIA began cooling them down. Many set up their own training school, and as late as 1973 they kept training other exiles in the use of weapons and explosives. A paramilitary parachute club, the "Golden Falcons," was the place where Humberto Lopez, Jr., the convicted terrorist, and Rolando Otero Hernandez, another terrorist who is now in hiding in Chile, first joined together and learned about bombmaking from a CIA operative. At a small office near SW I street on 22 Avenue, CIA operatives who learned about explosives and booby traps while in the special forces taught young Cubans how to handle most weapons in the American military as well as Russian and Eastern European weapons. Training in booby traps and grenades was held under the direction of Conrado Rodriguez. Usually the classes were well illustrated with the weapons and taught by four experts, all of whom had received a marksman badge. Even though many of the agents claim to have stopped their activities, men like Max Gorman Gonzales are still reluctant to talk to reporters, since they believe the CIA could use their services and are afraid to compromise friends still with The Company. It is interesting to note that while Frank Sturgis claims to have stopped his CIA activities, he was seen telling the exiles who were "recruiting" other anti-Castro Cubans to fight in Angola what to say. As reporter Amlong pointed out: "When Bernard Barker, one of the Miami Watergate burglars, entered federal prison, he encountered an old Bay of Pigs comrade, jailed for violating U.S. neutrality laws in a free-lance raid against Cuba. 'Chico,' the somewhat confused prisoner complained to Barker, 'the Americans, they are not like they used to be."' In Hialeah the egg factory is still working and the Power Chemical and Paper Corporation still operates with salesmen who double as goons. At 1800 NW River Drive, CIA operatives were still recruiting a force to fight in Angola in the spring of 1976. pps. 90-96 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
